Life Lessons from the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan

While reading Sebastian Junger's book 'War', I came across a few passages that really reminded me of the breadth of strength that we all posses. You don't have to be holding camp in one of the most dangerous war zones in Afghanistan to require greatness and focus from yourself on a daily basis. Use wisdom, learn from the sacrifices of your ancestors and of those that silently defend you, whatever country you may inhabit. Whether you believe in the ideals of the hand pushing the machine or not, learn from these people that put their life on the line. Don't waste your freedom by succumbing to the mental limitations of this age. Be inspired

" There are different kinds of strength, and containing fear may be the most profound, the one without which armies couldn't function and wars couldn't be fought (God forbid.) There are big, tough guys in the Army who are cowards and small, feral-looking dudes, like Monroe, who will methodically take apart a SAW* while rounds are slapping the rocks all around them. The more literal forms of strength, like carrying 160 pounds up a mountain, depend more obviously on the size of your muscles, but muscles only do what you tell them, so it still keeps coming back to the human spirit."

***

"Giving into fear or exhaustion were the ways in which a soldier could fail his platoon. But there were ways in which a reporter could screw things up as well. Tim broke his ankle in a nighttime operation on the Abas Ghar, but the medic told him that it was only sprained so that mentally, Tim would think he could walk on it...and he did. There was no other way to get him out of there and if the platoon were still on the mountain at dawn, they were going to get hammered. He walked all night on a fractured fibula with only Motrin as a pain killer, and they didn't tell him it was broken until he got to the cob**.

* Squad Automatic Weapon

**Contingency Operating Base

Coppola and the merits of risk

Risk
-noun
-exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance
-to venture upon; take or run the chance of



If you're wondering why should you listen to this man, it's because if anyone knows about risking all for a passion, HE would. The risks Coppola took to film a little movie called 'Apocalypse Now'(considered to be a masterpiece and #30 on AFI's top 100 movies in the past 100 years) were great and include:

-mortgaging his home
-spending large amounts of his personal savings on his film
-suffering a breakdown
-dealing with actors' heart attacks, obesity and drug problems
-extending the shoot by 13 months
-enduring typhoons
-filming in a country at war with local guerrillas
-entertaining the idea that George Lucas should direct his film....

"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live."

more about the filming of Apocalypse Now

Eisenhower: throwin' bows from fifty years ago

Almost 50 years ago to the day, President Eisenhower gave this address in his farewell to the nation:



That day, Eisenhower coined the phrase 'Military Industrial Complex'. Now we've all heard this term (most likely a lot these days), but lets break it down a bit:



Fast forwarding to the present:



"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
-President Eisenhower-

Be educated.

Be inspired.

Grant Morrison on Corporate Entities

To some, Morrison can either be hit or miss with comics, but the man has a method to his madness for sure:

Corporate entities are worth studying. They and other ghosts like them rule our world. So...figure out why the Coca-Cola spirit is stronger than the Dr. Pepper spirit (what great complex of ideas, longings and deficiencies has the Coke logo succeeded in condensing into two words, two colours, taking Orwell's 1984 concept of Newspeak to its logical conclusion?). Watch their habits, track their movements over time, monitor their repeated behaviors and watch how they react to change and novelty. Learn how to imitate them, steal their successful strategies and use them as your own. Create your own brand, your own logo and see how quickly you can make it spread.

Build your own god and set it loose.

-Grant Morrison-

Would I have the courage? Would you?

Would we have the courage to stand up for what we knew was the right thing without giving in to the fear of losing friends, losing jobs, being hated or even being killed? If need be, could people of our generation forsake the material gains of a never before seen technological future to ensure that the next generation can reach higher heights than we ever could?

These are indeed hard questions because no one truly knows what they would do when placed in a hard situation, we only know what we think we would do. To take a stand, to be selfless, to fight for the future, in truth there are only a few every generation (at best) who would place that sword of Damocles over their head.

Yet there is hope. These courageous people cast long shadows, shadows that can be likened to Olympic athletes running a relay race across human history using their legend to cut through generations to pass the baton of inspiration to the next person willing to fight the good fight for that time and place.

These people make our lives better while taking nothing for themselves, and we owe them everything.

Be inspired.

The Dream of Scipio

A passage from The Dream of Scipio:

"Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless."

Thanks Ricky!

Michelangelo teaches us that we have no excuses

Michelangelo had no desire to paint the Sistine chapel nor did he even consider himself a painter. If a man can accomplish such a feat with these feelings in his heart, what more can we do with our own desire and focus?

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

-Michelangelo,1509-




badassed interactive Sistine chapel viewer